This room is really in a mess.
I'm hungry.
It's unfair that some of us are left out.
I have such a busy day today. It's going to be hard to get everything done.
We're never going to make that deadline at this rate.
It's getting late. This has been going on far too long.
There's something we're not speaking about here.
How often do you speak in this way - making a claim or judgement about the world - when what you really want is somebody to do something?In each of these examples the speaker disguises the request they're wishing to make. Perhaps it feels safer this way. After all if you don't actually ask then you don't expose yourself quite as much. And you protect yourself from the discomfort of a potential 'no'.But speaking in this roundabout this way robs you of much of your power to have what's important to you happen. It casts others in the role of mind-readers.Can you see how your ongoing sense of frustration is being fuelled by this? And your identity - the way in which you and others get to see you as powerful or powerless?The making of clear, explicit requests of others - and being able to tolerate the response - is, for many of us, a huge step into a much bigger world.And the only way to really begin to enlist the support of others in what we really care about.